After an eight-month delay, three government-backed reports on the industry’s sustainability performance in 2008-12 have finally been published on the Green Construction Board website.
As previously revealed in Construction Manager, a report on the industry’s directly-controlled carbon emissions in England concludes that performance – in terms of carbon intensity, or carbon per £m of spend – actually worsened by 2% in that timeframe. In addition, it found that onsite emissions rose by 13%.
On the final reports on the Halve Waste to Landfill target, the conclusion was that the industry managed to achieve a 29% decrease on construction and demolition waste.
And there was a 19% decrease in site-based water usage, compared to a 20% target.
Rob Lambe, chair of the Green Construction Board’s knowledge and skills working group and managing director of Willmott Dixon Energy Services, acknowledged that the industry had “fallen short quite significantly” in relation to its directly-controlled emissions.
But he welcomed the publication as it gave the industry a clear “starting point” from which to judge future progress. “It is frustrating that there has been uncertainty as to what the reports said, and how we might take things forward. The important thing is, ‘what do we do next?’” he said. “There are a lot of construction processes that could become more efficient and use less energy.”
"There’s still a lot of opportunity to raise awareness and get more commitments. We’re linking in with the CIC and CITB to try and use their channels to get the message out – we want to increase awareness and see people making commitments, it’s an opportunity to demonstrate leadership."
Rob Lambe, Green Construction Board
Meanwhile, John Alker, director of policy and communications and acting CEO at the UK Green Building Council, said: “There’s no hiding from these figures. The latest report card from the GCB shows quite clearly the industry ‘must do better.’ There’s no silver bullet, but together we have to redouble our efforts to demonstrate not just the environmental but the business case for radical reductions in carbon, waste and water.”
Willmott Dixon’s Lambe hoped that the groundwork laid in the past five to six years, in terms of contractors getting to grips with measuring and reporting emissions, would bear fruit in the immediate future.
“The platform we’ve got doesn’t look too powerful if you purely look at the numbers and the targets. But compared to 2007-08, we do at least understand what energy is being used, by whom and for what. The industry is now in a much stronger position to understand what is happening in terms of emissions and waste and I think we’ll reap the rewards in the short term going forward.”
The main tool for driving improved performance in the coming years will be WRAP’s Built Environment Commitment, which has been adopted by the UKCG but failed so far to win much traction in the wider industry.
Lambe said: “There’s still a lot of opportunity to raise awareness and get more commitments. We’re linking in with the CIC and CITB to try and use their channels to get the message out – we want to increase awareness and see people making commitments, it’s an opportunity to demonstrate leadership.”
As CM has revealed, the GCB carbon report was hampered by lack of data. According to the report, the findings were calculated based on information provided by Balfour Beatty, BAM Construct, BAM Nuttall, CECA, Costain, The Environment Agency, Galliford Try, Interserve Kier Group, Laing O’Rourke, Lend Lease, Mace, Sir Robert McAlpine, McNicholas Construction, Miller Construction, Skanska, Volker Wessels and Willmott Dixon.
But that means that many major Tier 1 contractors within the UKCG’s membership failed to provide data.
Lambe says that stretched resources during the recession was the most likely reason for the paucity of data. “In 2008-12 the industry had a tough time. Some organisations struggled with resourcing – it is still a manual exercise to cleanse and check all the data. There was probably stress within organisations to allocate resources, so the number of companies [providing data] dwindled.”
